626 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1872, 



TO JAMES D. DANA. 



June 22, 1872. 



My dear Dana, — I fancy you have got hold of 

 a good topic for your handling, and have a promising 

 inquiry before you, in coordinating cephalization and 

 natural selection as operative on the nervous system 

 of animals. I expect you to get something interest- 

 ing out of it. 



But every now and then something you write makes 

 me doubt if you quite get hold just right of Dar- 

 winian natural selection. What you still say about 

 struggle not applicable to plants makes me think so. 



Suppose the term be a personification, as, no doubt, 

 strictly it is. One so fond as you are of personifiea^ 

 tion and good general expressions ought not to object 

 to what seems to me a happy term. 



Speaking from general memory, I should say that 

 the term, as used to express what we mean, was intro- 

 duced by the elder De Candolle and applied in what 

 I thought a happy way to the vegetable kingdom. I 

 cannot drop it because you say there is no struggle 

 where there is no will ; perhaps you mean without con- 

 sciousness, and then the field of struggle will be much 

 limited. But call the action what you please, — com- 

 petition (that is open to the same objection), collision, 

 or what not, — it is just what I should think Darwin 

 was driving at. Read " Origin" (4th ed.), pp. 72, 73, 

 and so on, through the chapter, especially pp. 81-86. 



This is enough to show you that when you speak of 

 " Darwinian struggle " as occurring only " when the 

 facidties of an animal are called into requisition," you 

 take too limited a view of what Darwin means. 



For myself I should say that the faculties of the 

 lowest animals and the faculties of plants were 



